Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Thursday 6/30/05

[Melissa G]

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Thursday 6/30/05

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.

If you can:

1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web.

2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x371233

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.



If you want to know how post "News Banners" or other images, go here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=371233#371391

Link to previous Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x381333

All previous daily threads are available here:
http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm





Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

[Melissa G]

1. Taped conversations of the defendants- St Louis

Taped conversations of the defendants


06/29/2005

A juror in the East St. Louis voting fraud trial said the secret recordings of five East St. Louis Democrats convicted on Wednesday were the strongest evidence in the case. Here's a small sample of what the defendants actually said on hours of those recordings, according to prosecutoion transcripts:


Charles Powell Jr., chairman of the East St. Louis Democratic Central Committee, speaks to committeemen at a meeting on Oct. 13:

"I got people in my precinct gonna run over me to come in there to vote on ... It's for the presidential election, you can't hold 'em at home, they gonna knock me down runnin' up there to vote. I ain't gotta give 'em nothin'. OK. Ain't gotta give them nothin'. But what you do is there are people who you know expect something, you take care of 'em all the time because you gonna need them all the time."


Election worker Yvette Johnson to FBI informer Dannita Youngblood on Election Day Nov. 2:


Johnson: "Give her another $10. The one sittin' in front."
Youngblood: "OK, so give these two ten?"
Johnson: "Give 'em ten, uh huh."

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/metroeast/story/8A85B5E24D83F523862570300012E686?OpenDocument

[Melissa G]

2. Jury member says secretly recorded conversations were key in

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/C055B6E80B9CB3D68625703000128BC6?OpenDocument

Jury member says secretly recorded conversations were key in convicting
By Michael Shaw, Doug Moore and Paul Hampel
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/29/2005

Charles Powell Jr. leaves the courthouse after he and four other defendants were convicted.
(Huy Richard Mach/P-D)



Five East St. Louisans were found guilty on all counts they faced in federal court Wednesday for participating in a vote-buying scheme to get Democrats elected during the Nov. 2 election.

When added to the guilty pleas of three committeemen and an election worker in March that resulted from the same FBI investigation, it's the largest bust of vote fraud in the city's recent past, and, perhaps, ever.

While much of the bluster during the monthlong trial concerned shaky witness testimony, it was the secret recordings that ultimately doomed the five, according to the lone juror who agreed to talk afterward.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/C055B6E80B9CB3D68625703000128BC6?OpenDocument

[Melissa G]

3. Vote fraud case chronology

Vote fraud case chronology


06/29/2005

Nov. 2, 2004 - Belleville Mayor Mark Kern, a Democrat, wins close race for St. Clair County Board chairman over Republican Steve Reeb, a board member. Kern captures 83 percent of the vote in East St. Louis to overtake Reeb.

Nov. 18 - East St. Louis Democratic precinct committeemen, including City Councilman Charles R. Powell Jr., chairman of the city's Democratic Central Committee, begin testifying before a grand jury looking into improprieties in the election.

Nov. 23 - FBI raids East St. Louis City Hall and removes computer hard drives and boxes of files. Many of the items were taken from the office of Kelvin Ellis, director of regulatory affairs and a Democratic precinct committeeman.

Jan. 21 - Ellis is indicted on allegations that he plotted to have a witness in the federal vote fraud investigation killed. Police Chief Ronald Matthews and three others are indicted on charges unrelated to vote fraud.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/metroeast/story/B8268365D2221EA486257030001309FF?OpenDocument

[Melissa G]

4. House passes changes to state Election Code

House passes changes to state Election Code
Thursday, June 30, 2005

By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau



HARRISBURG -- After two days of debate, the state House approved a variety of changes to the state's Election Code this week, including one that requires voters to present a photo ID at the polls, and another change that would prevent felons from voting for the duration of their maximum sentence, even if they're out of jail on parole.

By and large, the House ignored the recommendations made by Gov. Ed Rendell's Election Reform Task Force, including the panel's main proposal -- moving the presidential primary from April to March.

The House proposals now move to the Senate, which may wait until the fall to consider the items. Even if the bill is taken up, some elements might be too controversial to get past the Senate, then the governor.

Most of the proposed changes were sponsored by Republicans. Democrats in the House objected to several of the changes, saying they were too restrictive.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05181/530828.stm

[Melissa G]

5. The Man Who Would Destroy PBS

The Man Who Would Destroy PBS
Does Republican crusade spell bedtime for Buster?
by DOUG IRELAND

DU discussion
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x381569

snip
That’s hardly surprising given Lewis’ record of vindictiveness against his political opponents. “Lewis has a troubling, angry side, and an intimidating electoral style that can best be described as embodying pre-Watergate ethics,” says a prominent Democratic activist and businessman in Lewis’ district who, fearing reprisals from Lewis, requested anonymity. “The last time we put up a serious candidate against Lewis, he really went after the guy, put muckraking ‘political consultants’ on him paid out of campaign funds, went after our candidate’s clients and tried to ruin him, pressured one of our guy’s clients into suing him — Lewis is a take-no-prisoners kind of fellow.”

Lewis is a longtime congressional water carrier for the military-industrial complex, and for years has raked in big campaign bucks from its corporate behemoths like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, United Technologies, General Dynamics and General Atomics. Lewis’ congressional district is chock-full of military bases — including the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Training Command, Edwards Air Force Base and the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center.

Another huge facility in Lewis’ district is the million-acre Army National Training Center for desert warfare. A middle school, built to serve the center’s off-base military families, bears Lewis’ name, and is a charter school funded with what are called “special-impact funds,” which Lewis procured. The school was the centerpiece in another unsavory political scandal involving Lewis. A few years ago, a school-board member in the Silver Valley United School District, which has jurisdiction over the middle school, discovered some $15 million in cost overruns at the Lewis school, as the Desert Dispatch and the San Bernardino Sun reported at the time. A General Accounting Office investigation found dozens of irregularities, and a draft report by the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office sharply criticized the Lewis school’s management. Lewis’ reaction to all this? He had his cronies initiate a successful recall election against the obstreperous school-board member who’d spotlighted the fraud, twisted arms to destroy the man’s business, and, as the then-chairman of the appropriations subcommittee overseeing Defense appropriations, put pressure on the Pentagon to scrub its scandal-revealing draft report, which no longer officially exists (although a copy is in the possession of local Democrats). Lewis is not a politician many have the guts to cross swords with.



snip
And that’s not all. On the same day as the House vote on its budget, the board of directors of CPB — under the thumb of its hard-line Republican chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson — voted to name as CPB’s new president and CEO a partisan political operative: Patricia deStacy Harrison, a co-chair of the Republican National Committee for four years (1997–2001) and a major fund-raiser for George Bush, who rewarded her with a job in the State Department. She co-chaired Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole’s finance committee in 1996, when it accepted $80,000 in contributions from employees of Empire Sanitary Landfill, a waste-management company later indicted for illegally funneling contributions to numerous federal campaigns and ordered to pay an $8 million fine, the largest Federal Election Commission fine in history. Harrison is a former lobbyist and PR woman with no public-broadcasting experience, and was selected by passing over four more-qualified finalists for the top CPB job. “Patricia Harrison’s selection as president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is an outrage — her complete lack of experience and close ties to the leadership of the Republican Party represent a new low in public-broadcasting history,” says Josh Silver, executive director of the media-reform group Free Press, which has been central in fighting the GOP’s effort to bring public broadcasting to heel.

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/32/news-ireland.php

[MelissaB]

6. kick!

[Melissa G]

7. Carter/Baker Election Reform Hearing live webcast

tommcintyre DU Discussion
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=381595&mesg_id=381595

Carter/Baker Election Reform Hearing live webcast


http://www.american.edu/ia/cfer/hearings.htm